The Palestinian residents of the Umm Safa village, north of Ramallah, are constantly fighting Israeli attempts to seize their lands.
Throughout the years, these attempts have taken different forms, such as the building of an illegal settlement outpost in the Jabal al-Ras area in the village, with the full backing of the Israeli occupation army and organized groups of illegal settlers.
Land confiscation in the occupied West Bank has intensified since the beginning of Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip in October 2023.
According to the Israeli non-governmental organization ‘Peace Now’, last July Israel approved the confiscation of 12.7 square kilometers of land in the West Bank in the largest confiscation operation in three decades.
The organization said in a statement on July 3 that the area covered in the operation is the largest since the 1993 Oslo Accords. The group said that 2024 is considered to be the peak year for the confiscation of certain areas declared as “state land.
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The Israeli government has offered to lease the confiscated Palestinian lands to Israelis while forbidding Palestinians from ownership.
Additionally, since the beginning of the year, the area declared as public land has decreased to 23.7 square kilometers.
‘There is No Land’
Marwan Sabah, head of the Umm Safa Village Council and one of the landowners in Jabal al-Ras, told the Palestine Chronicle that although the confiscation has not yet been made official, the illegal Jewish settlers are imposing a fait accompli by bulldozing and seizing the lands.
The lands at risk amount to 500 dunums in size, which is the only area the villagers can use for agricultural means after all their other lands were confiscated.
“The village’s land was 4,800 dunams, but three settlements were built on it: Halamish, Ateret, and Neve Tzof. Then they cut off 600 dunams to build the settlement street also on our lands,” Sabah said, adding: “We only have houses left. There is no land!”.
Last August, the residents of Umm Safa procured papers proving their ownership of the lands of Jabal al-Ras, but Israel’s efforts were solely focused on their confiscation.
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Before the illegal seizure, residents of the village used to plant grape trees and seasonal crops, but since the illegal settlers took over, they were even unable to set foot there. If they do, they are instantly attacked by hoards of settlers with the protection of the Israeli occupation soldiers.
According to Sabah, the plan is to displace the villagers in order to create territorial contiguity among the three illegal settlements.
“There are 720 people living in the village. They want to displace us to make their lives easier and to connect their settlements,” Sabah told the Palestine Chronicle.
“Unfortunately, we also don’t have any support from the Palestinian government, although our lives are at stake and the settlers attack us daily to force us to leave,” he added.
On top of the Jewish illegal settlers’ attacks, a few months ago the Israeli army also closed the only two entrances to the village, forcing the residents who needed to leave the village for any reason to head to the neighboring village of Deir Sudan for exit.
These measures suggest that an integrated plan between the illegal settlers and the Israeli occupation army is underway to make life impossible for Palestinians in the village in order to force them to leave to confiscate the remaining lands.
Different Names, Same Outcomes
According to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, more than 50,000 dunams of Palestinian lands have been confiscated since last October in the occupied West Bank.
Amir Daoud, Director General of Publishing and Documentation at the Commission, told the Palestine Chronicle that Israel’s confiscation of lands in the West Bank takes place under different names.
There is the so-called “amending the boundaries of natural reserves,” which includes confiscations exceeding 20,000 dunams. These are often lands of reserves already confiscated to which new areas are being added.
The most dangerous, according to Daoud, is the confiscation of land under the label of ‘public land’, which is being implemented at an unprecedented level.
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The most significant confiscation of lands under this title occurred in the village of Aqraba, south of Nablus, after the war, based on two orders; the first involved the confiscation of 12,000 dunams, and the second the confiscation of 8,000 dunams.
The third type of confiscation according to the expert is labeled under the title of ‘military purposes’.
This type of confiscation is extremely dangerous because it is being used to create buffer zones around the illegal settlements, and 11 of these zones were created after the beginning of the war last October.
“Israel doesn’t announce that the goal of the confiscations is to create buffer zones, but rather for military purposes. However, after reviewing the military orders and maps of the areas, we discover that the goal is to create buffer zones around the settlements,” Daoud added.
The danger of establishing buffer zones is that the decision to confiscate 18 dunums around the settlements is not limited to that specific area, but rather aims to prevent Palestinians from accessing hundreds of dunams around the area, which eventually leads to permanent confiscation.
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The establishment of buffer zones was demanded by the extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich at the beginning of the war, when he called on preventing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank from approaching the settlements in order to prevent the reoccurrence of another October 7.
Israel, as a settler colonial regime, has been feeding, and growing as a result of the routine theft of Palestinian lands. This has been going on since the Nakba, the catastrophe of Palestine in 1948. The policy has continued since then, but in the last year it has accelerated at levels unprecedented in recent history, all part of Israel’s brutal occupation, which aims to empty the land of its indigenous people.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Fayha’ Shalash is a Ramallah-based Palestinian journalist. She graduated from Birzeit University in 2008 and she has been working as a reporter and broadcaster ever since. Her articles appeared in several online publications. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
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